Sunday, November 24, 2013

Colin Baker talks The Day of the Doctor

Earlier today, Blogtor got the chance to sit down with Sixth Doctor Colin Baker at the Official Doctor Who Celebration at the ExCel in London and chatted to him about The Day of the Doctor and The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot. PLEASE NOTE: This interview includes SPOILERS for The Day of the Doctor.

I started by asking him his thoughts on Peter Davison's special Doctor Who episode, Colin told me: "That was fantastic because Peter said way back if they're not going to have us in the special, and at that time we didn't know that a certain other Doctor was in it [Tom Baker], which was slightly irritating."

I was going to ask about that. "You know, all or none - that's what I would have thought. I know Tom did it for longer than anybody else and he's the oldest Doctor but by asking him and not us, it makes you feel like a second-class citizen, a bit.

I'm so glad Peter had the idea of doing our thing. Because it was there for the fans. I know the population at large don't care if all the old Doctors are in it or not but I think there's enough Doctor Who fans who would have loved to have seen us in it. Even though I don't look the same, none of us look exactly the same, but I look very much not the same.

Even if there was a way to get a small part in it, which we would have done with very good grace because we care about giving back because we've been given so much over the years by the fans - their unending devotion, which has been fantastic. It would have been nice to give back to them but it wasn't to happen.

And I didn't expect it to happen but then Peter came up with the idea of the film which is about us trying to get into it [the 50th Anniversary Special]. In a way, I'm glad we didn't do it now [star in The Day of the Doctor] because I'm so proud of that [The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot].

And Peter should be very proud of that because it's funny, it's poignant, and it really is for the fans. And I hope they're going to love watching it just as much as we loved doing it. I hope it gets a wider showing, 'cos there's a lot of people who can't get access."

As a fan I loved it, I absolutely adored it.
"Thank you, thank you very much."

8 comments:

Having seen Davison's film now, which is very sweet, this feels a little ungenerous to the BBC Wales Doctor Who team - you can see that right from the top down, the production team got in on the premise (and the joke), openly supported the classic Doctors and the script, and happily sent themselves up as the supposed bad guys in this situation. The hand may not have fed Colin the way he wanted it to, but it did indeed work with the Classic Doctors here happily and very openly, which is what makes this fan-pleasing mini-movie such wonderful stuff.